


To Gain from Sacrifice

by LORBEERPRINZ



Series: Zine Fics [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 00:45:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19188490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LORBEERPRINZ/pseuds/LORBEERPRINZ
Summary: [my contribution to Radiance: A Tellius Fanzine]Everything comes crushing down on him at once. Not only does Pelleas have to struggle with the burdens as Daein's young and inexperienced king, he also sees his country in the middle of a war, one that is destined to enrage the goddess. But as if that wasn't enough, every day he seems to learn something else that appears to confirm that he is not who everyone thinks he is. But what is the right thing here to do? Keep quiet and continue living the life of a king? Or press on to pursue the truth and destroy the family he had only so recently obtained?





	To Gain from Sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, this was my contribution to the recently released Tellius fanzine "Radiance". I'm absolutely honored that I was chosen to be part of it and I cannot express my gratitude of being able to work with so many incredibly talented artists and writers. It was in fact the first fanzine I ever got into (partially because many of them are art only and my art is... well...) and the hard work the organizers and contributers put into it absolutely amazed me. I hope everyone who bought a copy will have fun with all the great pieces in it, I can guarantee you each and every drawing and fanfic is absolutely fantastic.  
> Personally, I always had the feeling that my piece cannot possibly compete with the other fics that are in there and I have to admit I had a lot of trouble getting it together. Maybe it was because I was nervous, but I don't think I've ever doubted my writing style so much as with this one and I'm eternally grateful for all the support I got on the zine discord. You guys made this fic what it is today. Thank you.  
> And to anyone else, please have fun reading!

At this point in time, Pelleas felt like the royal library had become his second home. No, he had actually seen these books in the past days more than his own mother.  
But that was alright, he had to admit, it gave him room to breathe. After he had determined that the only way to atone for his sin and gullibility that had doomed his entire country if he just made one wrong step was his death, his mother had begun to leave his side even more rarely than before.  
It was slowly becoming suffocating. 

This meant that despite the urgency, the young king reluctantly enjoyed his nights locked into the library in a way, surrounded by nothing but books. Books did not talk, did not ask, just silently offered their endless wisdom to anyone in need.  
Even though now they would not tell him what he needed to know.

Pelleas pulled out another one. The title on its spine was already faded out, but this was exactly what made it so intriguing. It was obviously centuries old, giving him hopes to find something. While his first clue, that the death of the one bound to the Blood Pact would negate its effects, had been wrong, he had found it in very old scripture as well, the only one he had seen talking about it. From this, Pelleas had gained the impression there was a better chance of finding information in ancient titles.  
When taking it from the shelf, a small piece of paper slipped out, slowly sailing towards the ground. Tired and exhausted, Pelleas stared at it for a long moment.  
It seemed a lot more contemporary than the brown pages of the book in his hands and unlike those, it did not feel like it was about to crumble away under his fingers when he reached for it.  
He caught a glimpse of the ink on the paper, the handwriting looking familiar to him. 

“…no ability to shift…”

There were more pages like this in the book, a small pile of notes all stuffed in between a certain chapter.  
Examining it further, Pelleas found out this old work was called “The Unknown Phenomena of Tellius”, a collection of notes compiled by a wandering scholar many centuries ago. The young king skipped through the pages in hopes this man had also written about the Blood Pact and found descriptions and even drawings of things he had never seen before in his life – deformed spines, unknown animals, strangely shaped landscapes. 

The chapter containing all those newer notes was called “Half Breeds”.  
As Pelleas found out, it was full of archaic, defamatory language towards not only laguz, but also those that were born from a connection between them and beorc – something he had only head of but never actually witnessed for himself. Just like everyone else, and like it was noted down in this chapter, he knew it was frowned upon, but this was as far as his insight went.  
As he couldn’t shake off the feeling he’d seen the handwriting that had produced the newer notes somewhere, he began reading through them. 

“The young prince was born safely, average size and weight. Many physical similarities with the mother, but hardly any with His Majesty at this state. Very prominent marking.”

The top of the sheet dated it back roughly twenty years. Realization of who these notes were supposed to be about set in. Pelleas swallowed.  
That’s right, this writing did look familiar; it seemed to be Izuka’s. He turned the pages, his curiosity now further awakened. The next entry came from a few weeks later. 

“The boy shows average reflexes for his state of development. He grabs fingers and small objects, sucks accordingly on them, drinks regularly from his mother’s breast. However, despite testing a variety of stimuli – scares, smells, sounds, etc. – he never assumes his bestial form, as it is known infants at this age are supposed to do irregularly and often uncontrollably. At this point in time, this one seems to possess no ability to shift at all.  
I would recommend to observe the situation a little longer, as the possibility exists the boy suffers from illness or abnormalities, but His Majesty demands quick results. Therefore, I will use this opportunity to test newly developed serums once a non-lethal dose for infants has been found.” 

Pelleas swallowed. Nothing in this diary entry or whatever it really was made sense to him, so many things described on those pages felt impossible to be true. However, why would Izuka make all of this up?  
The final note he looked at read: 

“On demand of His Majesty, the child is gone. But it’s not exactly the loss of a test subject, for I gained a new one. Adult, very strong and promising.” 

He read through the pages once again, unable to make more sense of them than before. None of these descriptions, the reports, nothing sounded like he had been the child involved in this. He had his father’s face and a brand obtained much later in life, yet these pages seemed to be talking about a completely different person.  
The longer he stared at the papers, the colder he felt, a feeling that would not leave him for days to come whenever he remembered them. He tried to ignore it, told himself it had to be something else entirely. Maybe the dates were wrong, maybe he had mistaken the handwriting. 

He wanted to talk about it, but couldn’t quite find the moment. Izuka disappeared rather frequently and whenever he was available, Pelleas shied away in the end. More important things were due that demanded his and Izuka’s time. He thought about bringing the subject up with his mother too, saw how happy she was with him, how she was still recovering from the shock of his death wish, and just couldn’t do it.  
He was afraid he might damage what he had just recently obtained. 

After all, he finally had something like a family.

 

But there was no time for family.  
As if the search for a way to break the Blood Pact, one that did not involve death which his mother had argued was futile anyway, wasn’t stressful enough already, he suddenly found himself and his new home, his country, under attack by the Laguz Alliance, who had made their way to the capital despite the best efforts of Micaiah and her troops.  
He wasn’t angry. She and her comrades had done all they could while he was only able to sit and wait. Without experience or strength, he made for a terrible leader in his book. 

But this event also marked the arrival of Queen Elincia and Prince Kurthnaga.  
Pelleas had deep respects for Elincia. They had found themselves in quite similar situations, but where she had grown and thrived, turning into an even stronger queen with each passing day, he stumbled along and would probably be nowhere, himself dead and his country overrun, if it wasn’t for the tireless struggles of Micaiah, Sothe and their friends.  
Kurthnaga, meanwhile, was Pelleas’ first instance of meeting a Black Dragon and at first he found it curious that his mother and this boy, who looked like he couldn’t hurt a fly despite having demolished the castle’s outer walls in just about a second, were on such familiar terms.  
Then he remembered something. 

_“Many physical similarities with the mother. Very prominent marking.”_

No, he kept telling himself, it made no sense.

Once again, however, the time to ponder over this was short, another clash with the Laguz Alliance was imminent. This time, Pelleas decided, he had to step onto the battlefield as well.

 

And then, suddenly, this boy was there, in the middle of the woods he had found him and closed in on him undetected, swiftly and silently like the winds he commanded. Pelleas had heard that the Laguz Alliance had an incredibly competent strategist and now he stood eye to eye with him.  
He was shocked. 

An aura cold as ice, eyes that seemed to pierce into the very core of his soul. At the same time, this boy made it absolutely clear that he was not going to pay any respects to him as a king. For him, Pelleas was simply an enemy.  
He readied his tome, spells all but on his lips already, but Pelleas was much too fascinated by the person in front of him to prepare himself for a battle of magic. This strategist was so small, so young, there was no way he had helped orchestrate the fall of the Mad King and the progress of the Laguz Alliance. He was basically still a child.  
But more than that, his face was familiar. Everything about him felt familiar.  
And there was a brand. 

Pelleas had hardly ever met someone else with the similar prominent markings of a Spirit Charmer. Ever since he had obtained his mark and the guidance of the spirits that fuelled his magic, he had felt lonely. People weren’t as hostile towards him as they were towards those poor branded children he had heard about, but sometimes they would silently make him understand he was different and they feared him. Thought he was crazy.  
And maybe, he believed, he might be able to use this mark they both shared as the start of a conversation. Something that connected them and could overcome the differences between their two factions. He was Daein’s king, after all, he had to try something and diplomacy was at least a little more up his alley than fighting. 

But this boy, who never even told him his name, was not one for conversation, he realized quickly.  
In fact, he seemed out for Pelleas’ head.  
No matter what he said or asked, the strategist denied everything. He surely didn’t want to talk, carefully wording his replies in a way that revealed next to nothing. No wonder, they were enemies after all, and that seemed the only kind of respect the young sage had for him.  
And yet, Pelleas could hardly concentrate. The boy denied any connection to spirits and the powers they gave, and Pelleas had a hard time wrapping his head around it. At that point, he was way too occupied with surviving, clinging to his dark tome in the shadows of the battlefield. 

After a brief but intense battle, this competent strategist was gone as suddenly as he had appeared before the king’s eyes. His commander had called for him, apparently, and before Pelleas could even begin to stomach this encounter in the middle of those grey, unforgiving woods, chaos broke out around him.  
Just moments later, however, everything fell silent and the world was not what it used to be. 

Despite this silence, however, everything that happened afterwards felt so fast that he found himself in the Tower of Guidance in what seemed just the blink of an eye, fighting both Begnion and Goldoa, climbing higher and higher together with Commander Ike and his army and comrades, everyone fighting together, whether beorc or laguz.  
Even confronting Izuka along the way, finding out that he had lead him on all along, almost happened like in a hazy dream. He took in his words, which made his stomach curl, but somewhere deep in the back of his head, he denied their truth. It couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t.  
With each passing moment, however, lying to himself became more difficult. Izuka had betrayed him, betrayed Daein, betrayed his mother, betrayed everyone. And all Pelleas had been was just a puppet.  
But he didn’t want to be a puppet. He wanted to find the truth. 

 

And so, Pelleas had no idea how exactly he had ended up in front of Sephiran, but for a moment, all he told him, that he had just been yet another chess piece in a cosmic game, did not really surprise or shock him anymore. At least that was what he thought, although his body seemed to disagree as he hurled the last remnants of his stomach contents onto the floor.  
It wasn’t just the aftertaste that made him so sick his mind began to spin, it was the final realization that he had been right the entire time. For so long he had wished to have been wrong, for the chance he had misinterpreted something, that someone had lied to him, the notes weren’t actually Izuka’s… just something. But now there was this man, centuries old, looking at him with this unnervingly serene smile as he detailed how and why Pelleas had been used on the road towards divine retribution. 

Sephiran had no need to lie, and everything he said just confirmed Pelleas’ own thoughts. It was frightening, sickening, maddening. He didn’t want it to be true.  
But it had to be. It all made sense now. 

The Daein king swallowed down the last bits of bitter aftertaste. If all of it was really true, if he definitely wasn’t who everyone had told him he was, then he needed to survive, he had to get out of here and set things right.  
He didn’t want to live a life that was based on a lie. And more importantly, he didn’t want his mother to keep living with this lie. He needed to tell her, at the very least.  
Somehow, he managed to survive this confrontation with the infinitely more powerful Sephiran, surely it was only thanks to Empress Sanaki’s intervention. As the two of them conversed, Pelleas managed to slip away from his attention, limbed back until he felt the warmth of a healing staff being waved above his head. 

Looking up, Pelleas found that boy in front of him, the one he had fought not too long ago. Sephiran’s words still rang in his mind as he looked at him, treating his wounds with just enough care to get by, but such an icy disposition it made him believe the other archsage couldn’t care less if Pelleas just collapsed and died on the spot. He wasn’t even really paying attention, it seemed, familiar eyes instead glued to the scene in front of him as he whispered just one word and the young king couldn’t tell whether it was directed at him, the Empress, Sephiran or anyone else.  
“Fool.” 

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter in the slightest, as probably everyone involved in this was foolish, being the exact reason why this situation existed in the first place. 

 

When everything was over, the world was saved and order restored, Pelleas could not bring himself to confront his mother. No matter how disappointed he was with himself, how much he had sworn it would be the first thing he did returning from the Tower of Guidance, he just couldn’t.  
It felt so unfair. 

He retracted into his tent, swiftly avoiding an overjoyed Almedha by rushing past her before she noticed him, sat down to stare into nothing.  
His inner eye played memories from within the Tower to him – nothing special for many that had returned together with him, probably, but instead of imposing dragons or the Goddess of Order herself, Pelleas could not stop thinking about both Izuka’s and Sephiran’s words, the confirmation that his life in the past months, his newfound home and family, it had all been a lie.  
A lie founded upon tragedy. A lie that was meant to help wipe out all living beings. 

The blue-haired reached for one of his notebooks, drew out a familiar old piece of paper.  
_“Many physical similarities with the mother. Very prominent marking.”_

He let his head sink into his hands. It was just so unfair, he didn’t want to lose what he had now.  
But wouldn’t it be just as unfair to keep this important information from his mother – no, Almedha – and her actual child? He wasn’t sure. This child, if he was right this boy already had quite a lot – power, a place in life, people that cared for him. He had witnessed all of that first hand in the Tower.  
Meanwhile, Pelleas would lose absolutely everything. 

There was just no right solution to this, was there?  
He sighed. Maybe there was no right solution, but there was surely a moral one. Above all else, Almedha deserved to know that her real child was someone who had grown up gaining power through, as Pelleas supposed, hard work instead of being elated into a position out of nowhere like he had himself. She deserved to know the son she had spent years upon years mourning for had survived and prospered.  
What happened to himself didn’t matter. He didn’t care that he would lose everything, he knew someone who was way more qualified to lead the people of Daein than he was. Micaiah loved this country so much more.

It took a bit of mental preparation until finally, Pelleas managed to face Almedha. He felt almost as sick as he had standing before Sephiran, but he knew he had to get through this. He just had to, for her.  
It was hard, incredibly hard, and when it was over, it seemed to him like something just crumbled from him, though not in a good sense. He wasn’t quite relieved yet. He definitely had lost something. 

From afar, he watched Almedha and her brother wander across the camp between celebrating soldiers, healers treating the wounded. In doing so, Pelleas tried to help her a little and when he had finally found the person she was looking for, he silently guided her towards him with a small nod.  
She smiled a thanks and hurried over, but stopped long before the boy even knew she was trying to talk to him.  
Then, finally, it looked like she called out for him. 

It was impossible for Pelleas to hear the words exchanged, but they did not seem many. The distance between mother and child was deep, the boy’s unfazed gaze telling. This was far from the heartfelt reunion he had imagined to contribute to.  
And he had to admit that it hurt seeing.  
Granted, if he was true to himself, Pelleas had to admit that it would have been painful for him either way. Suddenly, all that had been his was being taken away by someone who had already had a lot of support from all sides, he felt. Suddenly, he himself was insignificant and lonely again.  
But was it too much to ask for at least a little bit of emotion in front of your own mother? He wasn’t sure. He had been quite confused and overwhelmed as well that day.

The boy left with just a polite bow, Almedha and Kurthnaga looking after him for a long time as he hurried back to Commander Ike’s side.  
Finally, Almedha turned and between the waves of people their eyes met, hers full of tears. But there was also a great smile on her face, the most beautiful smile he had ever seen on her.  
Once again, he couldn’t understand the words being said, but he was sure he knew what they were and nodded back.  
Maybe it was normal to be jealous. Maybe it was normal to be hurt.  
But he knew he had made the right choice. 

Pelleas smiled back, his lips silently forming the same words he had received moments ago and just like for the person he would always keep considering his mother, they came from the bottom of his heart.

 

“Thank you.”


End file.
